


An Agent's Arsenal

by notoneforreality



Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [22]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 007 Fest, 007 Fest 2020, Actual spy techniques, Bond is in this, Disguise, F/F, M/M, Q Branch, Spies & Secret Agents, Spy Techniques, Team Q Branch, Very OC heavy, but I was having too much fun with Bobby, but undercover as Benoit Blanc, by accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25363321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality
Summary: Sometimes Agent Carter gets fun assignments that involved guns and fighting and lots of action. Other times, she's just the messenger.Don't shoot the messenger.
Relationships: James Bond/Q, R/Agent Bobby Carter
Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795726
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	An Agent's Arsenal

**Author's Note:**

> Written for--  
> 22nd July: Agent Day;  
> This prompt from the 2019 anon list: A fic that uses actual spy techniques, like creating dead drops, passing cleverly coded messages, recruiting assets, etc.

Bobby sits at the bench in St. James's Park and sips hot chocolate from her travel mug, watching a couple at the pond fussing over the ducks. The taller one with red hair keeps scowling at the creatures and then pasting a smile over his face when the shorter blond man turns to him.

The blond one is just saying something about “We really ought to see Adam, soon”, when another couple strolls up in the direction of Bobby’s bench. 

This couple consists of an older man and a younger woman. The man has a drawling southern accent, silvery hair, and a large over coat. One had is in his pocket, while the other holds a cigar up to his mouth so he can chew on it in between words to his partner. The woman has long black hair falling halfway down her back, and big blue eyes staring out of a pale face that, along with the way she’s clutching at the man’s arm, give her a frightened look. The few words she says are touched will a Italian accent, and her voice shakes a little.

“Well, now, Miss Cucurachi, why don’t we take a seat here.”

The woman, Miss Cucurachi, darts a frightened glance at Bobby then says, “But it’s already taken.”

“Oh it’s no problem,” Bobby says, and scoots along to the end of the bench, pressing up against the wooden arm.

The man gestures Miss Cucurachi to the other arm, and then sits down next to her like he’s shielding her from Bobby.

With one fingernail, Bobby scratches and taps against her mug: one long, three short; two short, one long; two long, one short.

Without pausing in his conversation, the man taps his foot on the pavement: one long, one short, two long; one short; three short.

_ Bug? Yes. _

Making a show of checking the watch on her wrist, Bobby stands up, and then immediately trips over nothing, spilling the dregs of her hot chocolate all over the man’s nice shoes — patent leather brogues laced up with straight lines across.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry!” she says, while Miss Cucurachi gasps and the man tells her not to worry. 

She pulls a stack of tissues from her pocket and kneels to pat at the liquid, and the man leans down, too. With one hand, she gives him some tissues to help mop up, and with the other she presses a nickel coin into his palm.

It doesn’t take long to dry the shoes, and Bobby apologises sincerely to both the man and Miss Cucurachi, before marching off towards the park entrance. Just before she reaches the gates, she pauses next to a bin with a takeaway bag leaning up against the side of it. After a quick glance around to make sure no one’s paying attention, she bends down to pick it up and tucks it under her jacket.

Outside, she flags down a cab and asks for a lift to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. It’s only a half hour walk, less than a ten minute drive, but she can’t be bothered and she has the company credit card.

In the back of the taxi, Bobby gets her phone out and opens the Blanc email account, flicking briefly through an inbox with no unread messages, and then navigating to the drafts folder to find the most recent unsent email. The subject line says  _ Project Reference 1.13.161415..  _

_ C. _

_ Has anyone hired the caterers yet? Me and Olivia are working as hard as we can to find the personal protection equipment. The next appointment with the boss is next Monday. _

Bobby runs through the email quickly, picking out the indicated words from the first three sentences to get the message ‘C has hired me as personal protection’. The last sentence is innocuous enough that it didn’t need obfuscation, and Bobby pulls up the calendar linked to the email account. Sure enough, there’s a meeting marked in for next Monday at half five in the afternoon.

When she gets out of the cab and pays, Bobby heads into the park and then circles back round to get to Vauxhall Cross. 

Inside, Tanner materialises at Bobby’s shoulder and asks her for her assessment on Bond’s contact with Cucurachi, which is that it’s going as well as any of his missions with women go to start, i.e. very well but keep an eye on it because there is a very high chance she’ll end up dead within the fortnight.

Tanner narrows his eyes but Bobby just shrugs.

“He’s like a particularly bad STD,” she says. “If you have sex with him, you die.” Then, because they’re just entering Q-Branch and she has some level of immunity thanks to being friends with both parties, she says, “I’m impressed Q’s survived this long.”

At that, Tanner looks completely scandalised, and R and Q look up from the War Table to roll their eyes in unison. It’s a magical sight, and Bobby just grins back at them as she strolls up to the desk and sets the takeaway bag down on the first clear space she sees. 

“One order of every key in the Volpe household, to go,” she says.

Q tips the bag out and starts labelling the ones he knows, and Bobby leans on the desk and watches the video feed from where Agents Double-ohs Two and Four are surveilling Esposito’s house.

Bobby feels bad for Double-oh Four. She’s not particularly close with Edward Cadogan, but no one should have to deal with Richard Beaufort for an extended period of time. 

R spots her making a face and her lips tick up. “We were supposed to send Double-oh Five, but I think Bright might have murdered him after an hour alone in the car with him, and then there’d be trouble.”

Theodora Bright is the other half of the Teds, after Cadogan, and she’s usually the brawn of the operation, with an impressive talent for hand-to-hand combat and very little talent for dealing with bullshit.

“The meeting with Volpe is on Monday, by the way,” Bobby says when Tanner and Q have finished discussing which of the keys is most likely to prove useful, no doubt so she can make another delivery to Bond and his accent. “Cucurachi has already taken Bond on for ‘personal protection’, and Bond said he’s fixed the bug.”

“He’s fixed the bug?” Q’s hands fly over the keyboard and, in less than a minute, Miss Cucurachi’s voice is filtering through the speakers. Shortly after, Bond’s drawl comes through.

R frowns for a moment, and then laughs. “Oh, I forgot we gave him that Mississippi obituary. I was about to ask who that was; we don’t have any record of Cucurachi or Volpe knowing an American.”

“Nope, just Bond,” Q says, and Bobby briefly wonders how many accents he’s heard Bond use over the five years he’s spent working with him. “Okay, Tanner, I think we’ve got it down here. We’ll get back to you as soon as we have information on the location for Monday.”

Bobby glances at the camera feed again, where it’s still showing the same image of a closed gate leading up a drive to a closed door.

“Alright, well if you don’t need me anymore, either, I’ll be in the training range,” she says.

“Someone will grab you if the situation develops,” R says, and Bobby blows her a kiss before leaving, hearing Tanner’s footsteps just behind her.

She’ll go and grab Bright, she decides, and if anyone needs them, they’ll be shooting things. After all, no matter how many other techniques they use in this line of work, you can’t go wrong with improving your aim.

**Author's Note:**

> Keep notes:  
> \--wow hot damn the summary is bad I'm sorry  
> \--alternative summary for this fic: How many different spy techniques can Cassie cram into as few words as possible?  
> \--yes that's Crowley and Aziraphale; there's an illicit meeting of two agents in St. James's park, did you expect them not to be there?  
> \--techniques used: Disguise, morse code, [shoelaces code](https://boredomtherapy.com/cia-shoelaces/), [brush pass](https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/10/20/9-most-common-spy-techniques/), [dead drop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Nickel_Case), [foldering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldering), another code I don't know the name for*, surveillance, [ghosting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosting_\(identity_theft\)).  
> \--at one point whilst writing this I mispelled parties so badly that it autocorrected to pirates to give the sentence 'being friend with both pirates' and now I want to write that so  
> \--I love Bobby Carter very much  
> \--but yes I apologise for the amount of OC in this  
> \--*A message is written and then hidden in a longer, unrelated message. In this case, the subject line gives the numbers of words in each sentence that make the real message: 161415 means read the 1st, 6th, 14th and 15th words in that sentence


End file.
